Today, I am undoing. In this modern-day world where “doing” divides the successful from the also-rans, and “undoing” is tantamount to cutting your losses and limping back to the starting gate, it feels surprisingly good. I’m not frantic to make up the time lost, I’m not cursing myself over a lack of precision, nor am I on pins and needles about the final outcome. I like to work with a fair amount of precision. I aim for perfection, but I’m not a slave to it. I like to let the fabric of life have its way with me — and who’s to say this project or that won’t turn out better with a little free spirit thrown in? They almost always, always do.

So I’m slicing and removing, rather happily, what was really pretty much good enough to begin with. And it isn’t because I need the control, although that would be understandable. And it isn’t because I’m looking for pristine, although I’d certainly take it. And it isn’t because I feel anger and the need to destroy, or even the need to create. It feels calming, and free, and soft, and intimate, and in some ways almost motherly, although I’m not sure which of us is the mother at this moment.

And I think it feels good because it’s deliberate. I made a deliberate decision to take apart and resew these seams not only to make them straighter or to ease the way for the next, but because it feels good to get in there and wrestle with the guts, to decide, on my terms, which to leave alone, perfect or not, and which to slide my fingers along, unravel, consider, and remake in the style of my choosing. And yes, I am actually piecing and sewing and resewing fabrics, and yes, this is blissfully metaphoric. And of course the best part is that when I’m finished, it won’t just be pieces of cloth fitted together and beautiful, but pieces of cloth fitted together and beautiful and deeply, deeply considered, and this is what love is, yes?

And tomorrow the sun will be out and I will be in the garden, and my next post will be about weeding.